Designed to be carryalls, destined to be contenders?
It’s all just so unfair, isn’t it?
To keep longing and pining for precisely those things in life that you can’t have.
To keep yearning for those days when print was in its prime, and when Plum Sykes would blurt out the craziest things with complete conviction (and you’d believe it, naturally), like “Who’s going to go wear a chiffon Dolce & Gabbana skirt in the office? Only me or someone who works at Vogue, you know?” because The Devil Wears Prada was staple TV during your formative years.
Or perhaps to treat yourself to something nice, only to be struck by irrational pangs of paranoia. Because at the end of the day, as a #materialgworl growing up in a conservative Asian household, you simply value things too much. The Olsen twins dragging their detritus-slathered satchels to grossdom, you are not.
Imagine, therefore, the collective cultural outcry when Samantha Jones pointed at a rather unremarkable boxy red receptacle on display at Hermès and said, “When I’m tooling around town with that bag, I’ll know I’ve made it.”
Immediately, wishlists were drawn, holy grails were hailed, and we had to have our hands on one – identity theft or otherwise. After all, with Birkins of our own, perhaps our otherwise plebeian lives would seem a little less plebeian?
Yet, for an equally morbid batch of buyers that came before Carrie Bradshaw and her cosmopolitans, this ideal of a holy grail was the Chanel Classic Flap, “tooled around town” by one Ms. Gabrielle Chanel, the patron saint of feminists, Fascists, and adulterous lovers (or at least, that’s how the legend goes.)
So, how fair is it to compare two entirely different handbags that hail from entirely different eras and serve entirely different purposes?
On the Commodification of Culture
When André Leon Talley flailed his hands around in the air and wailed about “the famine of beauty,” he was probably referring to the state of the luxury market. Thankfully, former Hermès CEO Patrick Thomas was slightly less dramatic in shedding light on this paradox: “The more desirable the brand becomes, the more it sells, but the more it sells, the less desirable it becomes.”
Because you see, fashion, an industry historically hinged on the business of desire—a desire that would incite irrational buyer behavior and credit card debt—has now primarily pivoted to the business of, well, just business.
And that – to a degree – has dissuaded and alienated the aspirational customers – who were once the industry’s core clientele – for the 1% that now is. As Vanessa Friedman writes, “There’s a sort of warring imperative here between people who see it as a badge of honor not to buy full price and those who belong to the very tiny club that can. Economics are involved, but as much as anything, it’s also psychology.” Hence, cultural cornerstones, like the Hermès Birkin and Chanel 2.55, are mined – not because of their own uniquely fascinating backstories or artistic virtues – but as vehicles of “investment value.”
And you know what that means, right? Why, price increases, of course!
On Games and Gambles
In 1955, the first Chanel 2.55 sold for $220.
It wasn’t, however, the Classic Flap as we know it. Instead, the Reissue was characterized by Mademoiselle Coco’s Mademoiselle Lock design. In fact, the interlocking C’s now quintessential to the Chanel code was developed far more recently in 1983 by Karl Lagerfeld – when the bag retailed for a mere $1,000.
(Un)surprisingly, it was only a year later that the Birkin officially hit the Hermès shelves – three years after, as fashion folklore has it, Ms. Birkin drew its original sketch on an Air France “stomach-distress bag” – with a price-tag of $2,000.
Fast-forward to 2025, and both the aforementioned (and much-mused-over) receptacles retail for well over $10,000. Much to the dismay of, I suppose, those haughty Hermès-wielding (and Chanel-disdaining) women on the Chinese TV show Nothing But Thirty (and quite possibly, their irl equivalents).
Even their respective avenues of acquisition now have their fair share of eerie parallels. However, that’s really more due to Chanel’s recent institution of strategies similar to Hermès’ purported playbook of pre-spend for quota purses (the secret to which, as YouTuber ziyistylebook advises, is “Just be open and genuine about who you are and what you want”).
And with these many (as the respective houses would have you believe, entirely coincidental) conformities, how can you also not compare between the two?
On Valuables and Vagaries
“I don’t want all this shit,” shrieks Logan Roy in the second season of the stealth wealth drama, Succession, prompting his staff to dump, as Dazed writes in its article – Why don’t rich people eat anymore? – “Platter after platter of shucked oysters, fat orange prawns, and lobsters smothered in garlic butter served up on beds of ice” – the “shit” in question – unceremoniously into the bin.
Elsewhere in the über-wealthy universe, meal replacement supplements and Ozempic injections have become the trends du jour. And if quiet luxury is indeed real, the rich are really showing restraint in all aspects of their lives.
Which is why it’s all the more surprising that two Hermès customers from the state of California brought forth a class-action lawsuit—likely unwinnable and really just excellent PR for the Maison—for not selling them a Birkin.
Because if you’re in that income bracket where you’re so used to having things that not having things – or at least not being showy about it – is the ultimate flex, it must come across as a massive shock when you’re being told no.
And you see, that’s really where the success of Hermès – and with new policies in place, potentially Chanel – lies. Because they can simply refuse to sell, even if your wallet is brimming with cash. Because, in essence, they have harnessed the power of saying no, beating (or shall we say, eating?) the rich at their own game. Because at the end of the day, we desire most what we can’t have.
So, it was never really about comparing the Birkin with the Classic Flap—they’re fundamentally different bags that you can simply scroll across Fashionphile and buy right now, if for a slightly elevated price tag.
It’s about entering through those doors, flush with fantasies, butterflies in your stomach, and giddy with anticipation – maybe it’ll finally be my turn today?
